In 2010 I argued in The Ten Ships that al-Qaeda was not rooted in a place but in a transnational agenda with a system of support.
Neutralize the intellectual appeal of radical Islam, topple the rogue regimes, and ease Western dependence on oil and you win the war. Yet their centrality, and even their existence is what the politicians constantly deny.
Bill Kristof of the New York Times does his best to talk up the magnificence of President Obama’s strategy but only succeeds in exposing its bankruptcy. His argues that America must ‘help’ Pakistan, to invest in more schools but uses an example so unfortunate that it undermines his entire argument.
I can’t tell you how frustrating it is on visits to rural Pakistan to see fundamentalist Wahabi-funded madrassas as the only game in town. They offer free meals, and the best students are given further scholarships to study abroad at fundamentalist institutions so that they come back as respected “scholars.”
We don’t even compete. Medieval misogynist fundamentalists display greater faith in the power of education than Americans do.
Let’s hope this is changing under the Obama administration. It’s promising that the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid package provides billions of dollars for long-term civilian programs in Pakistan, although it’s still unclear how it will be implemented. One useful signal would be for Washington to encourage Islamabad to send not only troops to North Waziristan but also teachers.
The question we must ask is if Islamism has been sufficiently defeated by America’s new energy independence and the collapse or neutralization of sponsor states in the Middle East to let Afghanistan go.
The one big question mark remains Pakistan. Pakistan was where Osama bin Laden was after all and his successors may still be nourished there today. Victory in the WoT will not be complete unless there is some assurance Pakistan has been dealt with. If Islamabad has been quieted, Afghanistan will have been safed, at least for now.
As a practical matter the pressure on the military to pivot toward “near peer” rivals like China and Russia is growing. If Hong Kong is occupied by the mainland the pressure will grow intolerable. The urgent question is: how stands the situation with Pakistan?